


Took the cold from my bones

by estherlyon



Series: Prompts in a Galaxy far far away [10]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Angst, Declarations Of Love, F/M, First Kiss, Kissing in the Rain, Post-Battle of Scarif, Self-Hatred, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, survival guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-06
Updated: 2018-08-06
Packaged: 2019-06-22 22:57:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15592635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/estherlyon/pseuds/estherlyon
Summary: This was written in response to three prompts. Originallymelanoradroodasked me for a kiss in the rain, thenTinCanTelephoneasked for Cassian's POV and anon on tumblr asked for a follow up of that.Title from the Maccabees' song "Forever I've Known" (go listen to it if you haven't, have found it to be rebelcaptainy)





	Took the cold from my bones

**Author's Note:**

  * For [melanoradrood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/melanoradrood/gifts), [TinCanTelephone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TinCanTelephone/gifts).



> This was written in response to three prompts. Originally **melanoradrood** asked me for a kiss in the rain, then **TinCanTelephone** asked for Cassian's POV and anon on tumblr asked for a follow up of that. 
> 
> Title from the Maccabees' song "Forever I've Known" (go listen to it if you haven't, have found it to be rebelcaptainy)

Jyn didn’t remember it from the time she had come here with Saw, but Yavin IV was  _humid_.

One morning, a week after she had been discharged from the medbay, she walked into the common refresher of her barracks to find the walls dripping and she couldn’t understand why, other than suppose that a lot of people might have showered at the same time at some extraordinary temperature. However, when she walked out into the corridor, she noticed a soldier laying out duraplast signs along certain spots on the floor, its aurebesh letters warning where it was slippery.

The staircase leading to the medbay was completely cordoned off and she had to ride a turbolift for a mere level.

Yavin IV was normally laden with soggy heat, but there was a week’s worth of winter in which in the temperature dropped and apparently this happened.

Not that it wasn’t usually humid. When she had first arrived, she remembered feeling brought down for the first few hours by the sheer weight of the atmosphere, the sound of buzzing insects, and noticing the occasional patch of seemingly gratuitous mud on the grass. The past few days, though, she had been told to wear warmer jackets. It usually got chilly on the moon as soon as the sun disappeared behind the canopy of the trees beyond the base perimeter, but for those two or three nights, Jyn had positively shivered.

Bodhi had come to her with a hot water bottle. Heating wasn’t something they invested in when cold was an issue for barely a week in a whole standard year.

The past night had been warmer, she felt even able to walk around only in her mechanics vest. But all that water. She had seen techs running around making sure that droids and just general electric equipment were safe from shorting out.

“This is insane,” she mumbled, reaching out unconsciously toward the durasteel of Cassian’s walking cane, where little droplets were gathered.

He barely grunted out a response.

Jyn wasn’t one to use the weather as a conversation starter, but felt duly rebuked by making such an effort. Cassian was – Well, he had been put together since Scarif. Implants, surgical pins, bacta. Other things were harder to fix. There was something behind his eyes, a certain reluctance to accept that he was deserving of survival that she understood, honestly, because she was haunted by the same feelings late at night, but that broke her heart nevertheless.

He had come back for her. He had saved her life.

Somehow he didn’t see this as a valid reason to be there, learning to walk again with the aid of her careful hands and the supervision of a medical droid. He was getting thinner everyday, muscle atrophying where it wasn’t used, his cheeks hollowed out. It ate at her from the inside, because if he were to wither, so would her reasons for staying with the rebellion.

So she bore it out. His reluctance and gruffness, the occasional rudeness, even if followed by muted apologies, by eyes softening until she felt her own watering. She was already dulled to it, however, not even trying to argue anymore. She silently held on, guided his steps. Her comment on the weather was almost an anomaly and she didn’t speak more than was necessary after that.

When his session was over, she found Doctor Kalonia.

“Do you think,” she asked shyly, “do you think I could go for a run?”

The young doctor looked her over a touch surprised, “I don’t see why not. Just be careful.”

“With my knee?”

“Not only that, but the ground will be slippery. See with the quartermaster if they can get you shoes that have the right soles. And it will definitely rain in a few hours - thank the Force.”

“Won’t the rain make the humidity worse?”

Kalonia smiled, “no, it will clear out the atmo.”

Jyn nodded and walked off, barely saying goodbye to Cassian.

As soon as her feet the hit the pavement outside the base for her warm up walk, she felt better. Inside the Temple had been chilly still, but the air outside was much warmer and the sun filtering through the trees and the clouds made her feel like she was shedding her skin. There were trails into the woods that were used for that purpose and Jyn could make out a few recruits at a distance making the same use of them as she. After she felt comfortable enough, she broke into a brisk jog and after a few minutes even tried sprinting. Her muscles sang, her lungs burned and she felt impossibly alive. Even her crystal at her chest seemed to hum slightly with the change.

She decided to head back when darker clouds started moving in and a chilly wind hit her bare arms and legs, giving her some relief from her exertion. By the time she could make out the hangar in the distance, a few drops were already falling and she stopped, deciding to walk the rest of the way to cool down.

It seemed the Yavin skies had the same idea as she, because had barely slowed down when a sheet of water basically fell onto her, soaking her within seconds. She could barely see in front of her, making out through the water the lights around the base lighting up because of the impromptu darkness. There was something or someone approaching her, however.

She wiped at her eyes, trying to see who it was and when she did, her heart stilled and she rushed forward in a panic.

“What are you doing out here?” she screamed, “are you crazy!?”

Cassian was hobbling towards her with his cane, his fatigues equally as drenched. He used his other hand wipe away the water from his face just as she was doing and then stopped.

He didn’t answer, just turned his face up towards the sky and let the water hit him with full force.

That was it. He had apparently lost his mind.

But when she finally approached him, a hand automatically curling around his elbow, she saw that he was –

Force, he was smiling.

He opened one of his eyes in her direction.

“I’d forgot.”

“Forgot what?”

“How good this feels.”

She felt her eyes brim with tears. But honestly, it was getting cold out and he really shouldn’t-

“Cassian, it’s cold.“

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I’ve been horrible.”

Well, apparently, they were having this conversation  _now_.

“Yes, you have,” she drew her hand back and crossed her arms across her chest.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated, “and I don’t mean this like I’m going to wake up tomorrow and do it all over again. Kalonia nearly bit my head off after you’d gone today.”

“Good,” she breathed.

“I knew it, though,” he whispered, “I didn’t need to be told.”

“Good.”

She bounced on her feet to stave off the cold and yet, there he was, the man who would be pulling on a parka at the barest chill, like this was nothing. She was staring at him – and how the water was dripping from his hair, how his narrow chin was just trembling a little – and she didn’t notice what he was doing. That his hand was on her shoulder, burning her bare skin, because she had never stood in front of him wearing so few layers.

“I think I love you,” he mumbled and seemed to brace himself for her response.

She walked closer to him, slid a hand around his waist.

“You need to stop thinking you don’t deserve things,” she snapped to avoid her brain going into overdrive at the words he had just said. 

“Yes,” he said simply.

“You came back for me,” she was crying now a little, sounding barely coherent to her own ears, “you saved me and the entire kriffing Galaxy. You killed him. I’d spent my entire life having nightmares with that man and you- killed him. I- I think I love you, too.”

He closed his eyes, pulled her towards him even further.

Jyn faintly heard it, the clattering sound of his cane on the ground as he let it go to prop himself against her, mouth parting over hers and swallowing the entirety of her lungs’ supply of air. She felt dizzy, as if the blood rushing through her veins as she ran before was nothing compared to the torrent she felt now. She bit at his mouth, licked at him and the sound of the rain was so loud she  _felt_  him groan rather than heard it.

They pulled apart, only barely.

“Let’s get you inside,” she whispered.

He just nodded, a shadow of a smile on his face.

 

**

 

His foot was itching inside the splint he was wearing on his leg and he couldn’t wait to take it off. Except the only time he would do so was physio, and Cassian’s assessment of physio was not very erudite: physio was dumb.

Well, it was not dumb in itself. He was quite sure it was meant to be doing something to his muscles, whatever he had left of them after spending an entire month on a medbay bed barely conscious. But it was infuriating. Jyn’s presence in the sessions, helping him with the equipment, and her guiding hand as he tried to walk was sometimes comforting, but he couldn’t help but feel useless. Useless and unworthy.

He should have had died on that beach, the hellfire that came from the Death Star’s canon purifying all his past sins.

Now he had just added surviving - when so many hadn’t - to the list of his crimes.

Jyn’s eyes, understanding and gentle, and her rough hands, scarred and with bitten off nails but capable of incredible tenderness, only made it worse. He was not deserving of them.

And at the thought of her, she materialized, tearing through the medbay like clockwork and greeting him with a tightened smile. Cassian seethed at himself, because her smiles had been forthcoming and sweet ever since he had come for her with an army and now they were muted, a shadow of what he had previously seen. And it was obviously his fault.

He sat up on the bed, not without some effort. She was ready with the cane for him and he leaned heavily onto it. Her eyes, though, seemed entranced with the durasteel and the minuscule droplets of water forming there. It was one of those days.

Yavin IV’s humidity was one of his oldest friends.

“This is insane,” she mumbled, her fingers reaching for it.

He just grunted in response.

They walked over to the area of the medbay where he usually did his exercises, plopping down on a chair and raising his foot over a stool. He quickly undid the fastenings of the splint and pulled it off, his entire leg looking rugged and pruned underneath, with indents where the rough cloth and the duraplast underneath bit at his skin. It also looked fairly pathetic. Cassian had never been one to bother with his appearance, except when altering it on the field. But sitting there, in his nightclothes – they didn’t have a lot of proper hospital gowns and he was thankfully past the point of needing them –, with Jyn looking just so kriffing radiant next to him made him feel like something shriveled. 

And he didn’t even have to think about the implants in his back. 

She barely talked to him during the session. Mostly only simple instructions and questions so she could better help him stand up or change equipment. His heart ached to think of the woman who had smiled brightly at him up on that comm tower on Scarif, whom he hadn’t had the strength to kiss as they went down that turbolift. On the sand, it was his only regret: that he hadn’t managed not even to shove himself onto her just to know what it felt like. 

Even in her silence, though, there was still a measure of caring in how she righted his positioning, in how she wrapped weights around his foot so he could strengthen the muscles on his calf. When they were done, he opened his mouth to say something, but her expression was shuttered and she walked over to speak to Doctor Kalonia without paying him any mind.

He was taken for a shower and was back on his bed - coughing because his lungs were still weak - when Kalonia arrived, dragging a duraplast stool so she could sit down.

She was Alderaanian, probably about his age, and had worn her hair in intricate braid patterns until one day he woke up in the medbay after Scarif and she had hacked it all off. Like others from that planet, there was a perpetual sadness in her eyes he didn’t see in their Princess. Alderaan’s loss showed itself in Leia’s body in other ways, in the hollow of her cheeks and the clench of her jaw. Kalonia was more like the others.

The young doctor made a gesture so she could check his lungs with a sensor. He bore it in silence.

“Good thing to know that your breathing exercises are working,” she said.

He hummed in response.

“Your  _other_ exercises, though, are giving you trouble?” It had started as a statement and ended in a question.

“I hate physio,” he sighed, “I feel-… Nevermind.”

“Come on, Andor,” she said, plopping down in the stool, “bottling it all up isn’t doing you any good.”

He was about to open his mouth to make a pithy remark about psychiatrists when he remembered that Kalonia’s father had been one on Alderaan. He just sighed, knowing that her reasoning was right. He felt miserable.

“I feel pathetic,” he said, just the tip of the iceberg of self-hatred that was currently his brain.

She smiled sadly, but then her eyes flashed with something and he was slightly afraid, he had to admit.

“I know. But it’s no excuse - no excuse  _at all_  - to take it out on Jyn.”

He closed his eyes, feeling something burn behind them. Maybe it was all the humidity and the feeling that rain would come crashing in a few minutes to relieve them all of the sogginess. He used to love those rain showers after a heavy day when he was younger; if felt like they were washing away all that felt heavy within him, too.

“I don’t-  I don’t deserve it, Harter,” he whispered, “I don’t deserve  _her_.”

“I think that’s not something for you to decide alone,” she folded her arms across her chest resolutely, “and I thought that being in the rebellion since forever made you more than aware that people are sick of not being able to make their own decisions.”

He ran a hand over his hair, a bit longer now that he was bedridden and well, with other priorities.

“I know.”

“Good,” she said, getting up.

“Where did she go?” he asked feebly, “she usually says.”

“She went running,” Kalonia smiled, “she’ll probably be caught in the rain.”

“I miss running,” he said.

“Well, good thing I have other things to do rather than babysit you all day. If you were to go for a walk, I wouldn’t be here to stop you.”

*

“I’d forgot,” Cassian found himself saying over the sound of the water as it drenched his clothes, his splint, his hair, his pathetic excuse for a heart.

“Forgot what?”

Jyn looked slightly horrified to find him there in the rain and half like she thought he had lost his mind. He didn’t blame her.

“How good this feels.”

“Cassian, it’s cold,” she didn’t need to finish by saying that he had a load of mucus still in his lungs and that yes, this was probably non-advisable.

But a  _doctor_  had suggested it.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I’ve been horrible.”

She froze and drew back the hand she had automatically put around the curve of his elbow – kriff, this woman was unbelievable – to cross her arms defensively over her chest.

“Yes, you have.”

He had to admit that stung, but this was it, wasn’t it?

“I’m sorry,” he found himself stressing, “and I don’t mean like I’m going to wake up tomorrow and do it all over again. Kalonia nearly bit my head off after you’d gone.”

“Good,” he barely heard it over the rain.

“I knew it, though,” he forced out, but it came out as a whisper, “I didn’t need to be told.”

“Good.”

She just stood there. He closed his eyes, not even feeling the bite of the chill anymore on his wet skin.

“I think I love you,” tumbled out of his mouth.

He tensed, felt his hand curling around the handle of his crutch with all his might, because well-

But Jyn’s eyes were wide and resolute as she walked up closer to him and slid a cold hand around his waist.

 

**

 

Of course he got sick.

Not immediately, obviously. After he had gone back to the medbay and Kalonia had dutifully harangued him while leading him to the medbay ‘fresher, Jyn appeared with lunch from the mess hall, some shapeless gunk to rival the plate of tasteless mush they served in the medbay. After eating, she had sweetly kissed him again and left to take up the duties befitting her new rank as a sergeant in the Alliance.

She had dinner with him, too. And for someone who was so wholly used to being alone, Cassian found an unspeakable measure of comfort in her presence.

His bed felt cold when she left, which was stupid, because she hadn’t lain there with him at all.

By 0200 standard, he was shivering uncontrollably and coughing his lungs out.

He tried huddling under the old, thick plush blankets a humanitarian shipment from Chandrila had brought over in the first years of their occupying Yavin IV, but there was no cheating the equipment he was still partially hooked to. Something must have pinged for the med droids, because suddenly, there was a 2-1B unit looking him over.

He shouldn’t have gone out in the rain with his lungs still filled with mucus. His poor respiratory tract had no understanding of how alive he had felt with the water cascading over him, with Jyn’s mouth supple and sweet under his.

“Captain Andor,” said the droid’s voice, not comforting at all, “you have a fever. You have developed symptoms of the common cold.”

Instantly, his mind felt hazy and his throat itchy. It rather felt like those times when he got hurt on the field and only felt pain after seeing the damage.

“We are going to administer some medication to alleviate such symptoms. You should try and sleep.”

Cassian felt something prick him in the arm – his IV lines had been removed weeks before, thank the Force – and he closed his eyes. After a while, he felt human hands arranging his blankets over him, had the impression that someone was leaving a bottle of fresh water on the nightstand.

Hours later, he was still feeling like he had been run over by an Imperial walker and coughing so much, he felt like he was about to break his recently mended ribs. The med droid was back and took his arm. In his confused state, Cassian could tell they were feeling for an access vein.

_No._

Cassian clenched his fist hard in their hold and tried pulling it back.

“Cassian, please,” it was Harter, “your fever didn’t lower with the usual antipyretics, which means- there’s a chance this is more serious.”

“Please,” he rasped, staring into the doctor’s mournful eyes, “not again.”

Kalonia sighed, clasping her uniform jacket tightly at her front, which told him she had most likely slipped it over her sleep clothes. He was doing so bad, the droids woke her up. At the thought he felt his heart rate speed up and suddenly he couldn’t breathe; he had been due to leave the medbay in three days. 

“All right, all right” she said, voice filled with concern, at the same time gesturing for the 2-1B to let him go, “but you’re going to drink every bottle of water I put in your hand. You need fluids to flush that mucus out.”

He nodded dumbly, feeling like he was five years old.

He hated himself.

At least there was nothing new in that.

He still felt like he couldn’t breathe.

Kalonia was sitting on the bed now, the droid gone, and took his hand, “come on, count your breaths. We’re not going to put you on IV again. We know how that makes you anxious. I just thought- it would be better for you.”

He tried inhaling and started coughing again.

When he was done, he laid back against the bed, worn out, his throat raw and his eyes watery. Kalonia was looking at him like she didn’t quite know what to do with him.

“I had never pegged you for a romantic,” she said, “half the recruits were walking around moony eyed from having seen that.”

“It was your idea,” he shot back, although too weakly for emphasis.

“I didn’t say you should walk out in the rain like some Mariann Desh! I  _suggested_  you go look for her once she was back.”

Right. He sighed. Something rattled in his lungs that reminded him too much of Scarif, of staring into Jyn’s eyes and saying that her father would have been proud of her. He shook his head. 

“Is Mariann Desh the one-”, he faintly remembered something about his psych evals, that speaking of something else might lessen his anxiety.

“Janynn Ost, yes.”

“My sister loved her novels.”

Kalonia smiled, looked at the monitor beside his bed.

“Your heart rate is still too high,” she mumbled, “I’m sorry. It’s late and I didn’t remember that you-“

“It’s okay.”

“Would you feel better if I called Jyn over?”

 _Yes_ , “no, don’t bother her.”

“Cassian.”

“Please don’t.”

The young doctor sighed again. She was doing a lot of that. Then she nodded, and fiddled with the equipment in his bed, made sure he was comfortable, telling him how it was better if he slept with his bed propping him up a bit and rambling about her favorite Ost novels. She asked him about his leg, about his ribs and if he had any pain on his back. When she was satisfied that his anxiety attack was over, she left him with instructions to call if he wanted and to try and get some sleep.  

Of course he couldn’t, and it didn’t take long, really, for someone to approach his bed again. Only it wasn’t the droid or Kalonia this time.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, “I told Harter not to bother you.”

Jyn sat down on the mattress, where the woman they were talking about had sat down before. Her eyes looked sad, a little bit like she had been crying and his heart lurched because the whole point of him chasing her outside was doing everything he could to never ever hurt her again.

“She knows better than to listen to you,” she said, reaching with a hand to push his hair away from his face, “how are you feeling?”

 _No more lying,_ “awful.”

“Would you feel better if I stayed here with you?”

 _No more lying_ , “yes.”

“This bed looks large enough,” she said, green eyes roving over the mattress and the blanket, “and you don’t have any stuff like IV accesses and tubes, so-“

She maneuvered herself so she was lying down next to him on the other side of his healing ribs and his bad leg. He automatically lifted an arm so she could fit in his hold and just the feel of her, of her shape slowly fitting against his like some jigsaw puzzle and the smell of her in what little air got into his nostrils made something settle in his chest that wasn’t mucus for once.

“You’ll catch this, whatever it is,” he mumbled, turning his head to kiss her cheek.

“I don’t care,” she said, “I’ll keep you company here officially then.”

“I’ll be coughing the entire night.”

“I’ll be here to soothe it.”

He was feeling sleepy already, like her being here made whatever they had shot him up with finally work.

“You know how I said I  _think_  before?”

She hummed in response.

“I don’t. Think, that is. I’m pretty sure.”

He felt her kiss him under his jaw.

“Go to sleep, Cassian.”

He did. 


End file.
